Highlights

Of Montreal / Loney, DearIrving Plaza; New York, NY

This show went from suck to rock faster than your flashy sports car does zero to 60. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh — it took a bit longer than that, specifically, the duration between the end of Loney, Dear’s set and the beginning of Of Montreal’s.

Loney, Dear had already been riding the wave of Swedeophilic hype for a few months (though their U.S. release hadn’t even hit stores yet), so I was interested in checking them out. I’d heard a song or two here and there, and nothing really stuck out as fabulous to me. Perhaps the magic is in the live show, I thought. Well, so much for optimism. Their performance began with at least two minutes of humming from vocalist and songwriter Emil Svanängen, who later attempted all sorts of vocal gymnastics beyond his range. The songs themselves were, somehow, simultaneously anthemic and bland. “I Am John” seemed to be the favorite of the crowd (who were, for the most part, really into the set), and it impressed me a bit more than everything else but still seemed simply competent. Mostly, Loney, Dear are representative of indie rock’s laziest and most derivative tendencies, a copy of a copy of a copy.

More exciting than Loney, Dear’s performance was watching Of Montreal’s road crew set up. Though they worked behind a screen, I could see a golden owl statue and cardboard flames peeking out the sides and just knew that something fucking weird and fantastic was in store. And then someone — perhaps from onstage, but I can’t say for sure — started blowing up condoms and passing them around the crowd like beach balls at a frat party. All of this was good preparation for the dramatic, sexually-liberated, and altogether bizarre shit that was about to go down.

Before the band made its first appearance, we caught a glimpse of the vague but spirited morality play that would persist throughout the set as a figure in a Darth Vader costume (not kidding, guys!) slunk about the stage. Later, we would be treated to the appearance of a mustachioed gentleman clothed from head to toe in a skintight, white, spandex suit. To my eyes, it seemed like these two were meant to be playfully emblematic of the struggle between good and evil, here represented as sexual freedom vs…. well, I’ve never sat through an entire Star Wars film, but I have to guess that Darth Vader doesn’t have that much sex. No matter — no deeper meaning could overpower the sheer spectacle of this polysexual pageant. I mean, it’s hard to conjure up your analytical skills when you’re watching a guy in spandex do nasty things with Kevin Barnes and a banana.

And Of Montreal? It almost goes without saying that they're in top form. Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is a big fucking album that demands a big fucking stage show, and Barnes, et al were hell-bent on making it happen. New songs like “Suffer for Fashion” and “Heimsdalegate Like a Promethian Curse” rocked the house like only upbeat tunes about mental anguish can. Favorites like “Disconnect the Dots” from Satanic Panic in the Attic and “The Party’s Crashing Us” from The Sunlandic Twins were revitalized in an all-new, all-glam context. The one dark moment during the show, the band’s performance of “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal,” was a standout for its exorcism-like intensity — which was surprising, as I almost always skip the twelve-minute track when listening to the album.

I had hoped that Barnes would strip down so as not to leave TMT out of the hot, nakey pix party, but this was a 16+ show, and it was not to be. Instead, we were treated to three costume changes, the most ambitious of which involved our hero, on something like stilts, in a twelve-foot-high silver dress. What this all adds up to, among other, more prurient things, is that Kevin Barnes is a performer in the true sense of the word, drawing from and worthy of comparisons to both Prince and David Bowie. Thirty years ago, the guy wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without fans of all gender throwing their undergarments at him. And just as we might hate the idea of our favorite bands becoming popular beyond their wildest dreams… perhaps then we’d at least have the pleasure of seeing Justin Timberlake (I mean it, dude), instead of Loney, Dear, open for Of Montreal.